'NRA: Practice Range' App Released for Children

15 January 2013

(FAIRFAX, Va.) — The National Rifle Association (NRA) has released a “Practice Range” Shooting App for iOS, according to Apple’s App Store description. The app combines the NRA’s facts and educational materials with a 3-D shooting game, which, according to the description, “instills safe and responsible ownership through fun challenges and realistic simulations.”

The game includes nine firearms and three different shooting ranges, though you have to pay 99 cents to unlock some of weapons, including a Beretta, MK11 and a Colt pistol. The game is rated for children ages four and up, and says it “strikes the right balance of gaming and safety education, allowing you to enjoy the most authentic experience possible.”

The app, which is available for the iPhone and iPad was created by MEDL Mobile, and is described in Apple’s App Store as an “Official NRA Licensed Product.” The NRA and MEDL Mobile did not respond to ABC News’ repeated request for comment.

NRA Executive Director Wayne LaPierre has argued since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings that video games and movies are to blame for the culture of violence in the United States.

“There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people, through vicious, violent video games with names like Bullet Storm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Combat, and Splatterhouse, ” LaPierre said at a press conference on Dec. 21.

The app was released just as the NRA finished meeting with Vice President Joe Biden about gun violence. “We were disappointed with how little this meeting had to do with keeping our children safe and how much it had to do with an agenda to attack the Second Amendment,” the NRA said in a statement following the meetings last week.

Biden also called on game industry leaders. In a meeting with representatives from the video game industry, including members of Electronic Arts, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, and Activision Blizzard, Biden asked for help. “We’re anxious to see if there’s anything you can suggest to us that you think would be — would help, as this president said, diminish the possibility, even if it only saved one kid’s life.”